Proper scoring rules can be used to incentivize a forecaster to truthfully report her private beliefs about the probabilities of future events and to evaluate the relative accuracy of forecasters. While standard scoring rules can score forecasts only once the associated events have been resolved, many applications would benefit from instant access to proper scores. In forecast aggregation, for ...

The south Caucasus and Central Asia will be of growing geopolitical significance to the West and NATO over the next 10–15 years because of their potential contribution to global energy supplies and energy security and the risk that conflict and instability could spread beyond the region, invite foreign military intervention, provoke a resurgence of Russian neo-imperialism, redefine the territor...

This paper discusses the relationship between ontology, seen as the doctrine concerned with the nature of reality, and the management of technology. It introduces two ontological positions: realism and constructivism. Realism is the position that holds that reality is objectively given and independent of the observer. Constructivism stands for the belief that reality is constructed by the obser...

Undoubtedly, during the post-Cold War era, the fields of political competition changed and with the change in the political geography of the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus and Central Asia, as the Soviet Union collapsed and new countries emerged, the field of competition for a change in power balance not only expanded but took on a new form. Economic benefits, diversification of fossil fuels and new...

The Kosovo war of 1999 brought the checkered legacies of Russian and Western geopolitics back to the forefront of international relations. Central to the discussions of the Balkans is its century-old legacy as a Shatterbelt or Crush Zone. Though not identified by Saul Cohen as a Shatterbelt during the Cold War, the region is now located where the maritime (Western) and land power (Russian) geos...